Switched-mode amplifiers and devices having such amplifiers include quadrature pulse-width modulation that is based on cartesian (as opposed to polar) coordinates. Two sets of pulses that represent respective in-phase and quadrature components of a conventional cartesian-coordinates input signal can be combined such that the combined set of pulses can be provided to a switched-mode amplifier without nonlinear cartesian-to-polar transformation and its associated wider internal bandwidth and other problems.
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12. A method of generating quadrature pulse-width modulation (qpwm) signals, comprising the steps of:
converting, by a converting circuit, in-phase (i) and quadrature (Q) components of an input signal into at least two pulse-width modulated (pwm) signals that are trains of pulses, and
reshaping, by a reshaping circuit, the at least two pwm signals into a qpwm signal, wherein the qpwm signal is a succession of pulses, and alternating pulses have widths that correspond to one or the other of the i and Q components, and the qpwm signal comprises a pair of signals;
separately amplifying each of the pair of signals; and
combining the amplified pair of signals.
9. A device for generating quadrature pulse-width modulation (qpwm) signals, comprising:
a circuit configured to generate, based on an in-phase (i) component and a quadrature phase (Q) component of an input signal, at least two respective pulse-width modulated (pwm) signals that are trains of pulses; and
a reshaper configured to transform the at least two pwm signals into a qpwm signal, wherein the qpwm signal is a succession of pulses, and alternating pulses have widths that correspond to one or the other of the i and Q components, and the reshaper includes two pairs of logic gates and a nand gate for each pair that produce the qpwm signal based on signals from the pairs of logic gates.
10. A device for generating quadrature pulse-width modulation (qpwm) signals, comprising:
a circuit configured to generate, based on an in-phase (i) component and a quadrature phase (Q) component of an input signal, at least two respective pulse-width modulated (pwm) signals that are trains of pulses;
a reshaper configured to transform the at least two pwm signals into a qpwm signal, wherein the qpwm signal is a succession of pulses, and alternating pulses have widths that correspond to one or the other of the i and Q components;
at least two amplifiers, wherein the qpwm signal comprises a pair of qpwm signals and each of the pair of qpwm signals is amplified by a respective amplifier, and a combiner configured to combine the amplified pair of qpwm signals.
1. A device for generating quadrature pulse-width modulation (qpwm) signals, comprising:
a circuit configured to generate, based on an in-phase (i) component and a quadrature phase (Q) component of an input signal, at least two respective pulse-width modulated (pwm) signals that are trains of pulses; and
a reshaper configured to transform the at least two pwm signals into a qpwm signal, wherein the qpwm signal is a succession of pulses, and alternating pulses have widths that correspond to one or the other of the i and Q components;
wherein the circuit comprises a first pulse-width modulator configured to generate one of the pwm signals based on the i component and a second pulse-width modulator configured to generate another of the pwm signals based on the Q component, each of the first and second pulse-width modulators comprises a respective pair of controllable time-delay elements and a logic gate, each of the pairs of controllable time-delay elements phase-shift a reference signal in opposite temporal directions based on a respective one of the i and Q components, and each gate produces a respective one of the pwm signals based on the phase-shifted reference signal.
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This application is a non-provisional of and claims the benefit of the filing date of U.S. Provisional Patent Application No. 61/012,827 that was filed on Dec. 11, 2007.
This invention relates to electronic amplifiers, and more particularly to switched-mode radio frequency (RF) power amplifiers.
Transmitters in many modern communication systems, such as cellular radio systems having carrier frequencies of 1-2 gigahertz (GHz) or so, need to have wide bandwidth, wide dynamic range, and high accuracy (low distortion) in phase and envelope to deal with modern modulation schemes that enable effective use of allocated bandwidth. In addition, it is currently preferable that high-performance amplifiers be implemented in CMOS for reasons of cost and integration. Transmitters in battery-powered devices need to be efficient so that battery energy is conserved.
In conventional radio transmitters, the signal information is often represented as two channels in quadrature phase that can be mixed together to form a combined low-power signal that is amplified for transmission. A linear power amplifier is needed for proper amplification of the combined signal, but there is a trade-off between efficiency and linearity in RF power amplifiers. If high linearity is required, a Class A amplifier can be used, but at the cost of low efficiency. If a constant-envelope signal is to be amplified so that linearity is not critical, a high-efficiency switched-mode (Class D, E, or F) amplifier can be used. Switched-mode amplifiers also can provide high power with low peaks in current and voltage, behavior that is important in CMOS implementations due to the limited breakdown voltages of CMOS devices.
Various methods of designing high-efficiency amplifiers are known that require the input signal to be represented in polar coordinates (i.e., as an envelope, or amplitude, component and an associated phase component). It will be understood that polar coordinates are analogous to Cartesian coordinates, and polar modulation (envelope and phase) is analogous to quadrature modulation (in-phase component and quadrature-phase component). Polar modulation can be advantageous because typical active semiconductor devices, e.g., transistors, must operate nonlinearly if they are to operate with high power efficiency. In its nonlinear region, an active device can still represent the phase of an input signal with reasonable accuracy, but not the input signal's envelope. This behavior results in a natural separation of phase and envelope components that enables polar modulation systems to use highly non-linear but highly power-efficient switched-mode power amplifier architectures, such as Classes D, E, and F.
Converting a signal from Cartesian coordinates (in-phase and quadrature components) to polar coordinates (envelope and phase components) is a nonlinear transformation, and so an input signal, e.g., a signal to be amplified, that has a particular bandwidth before the nonlinear transformation will have a much wider bandwidth after the transformation. Modern communication systems usually allow for that by having an internal bandwidth that is four to eight times that of the original signal that needs to be handled in order not to introduce too much distortion. For example, a transmitter presented with an input signal having a bandwidth of 1 megahertz (MHz) usually has an internal bandwidth of at least 4-8 MHz if the input signal is converted from Cartesian to polar coordinates.
Wider internal bandwidths require, among other things, fast digital-to-analog (D/A) converters (assuming a digital input signal) that are harder to design and that dissipate more power. Another common problem with polar modulation is the difficulty of synchronizing the phase and envelope component signals, which is to say that it can be difficult to match the time delays of both component signal paths through the amplifier or transmitter.
In addition, to amplify an envelope component properly, a switched-mode amplifier typically needs some kind of linearization, such as pulse-width modulation (PWM), that itself can be linearized by using low-frequency feedback. PWM is described in U.S. patent application Ser. No. 12/127,126 filed on May 27, 2008, by C. Bryant for “Pulse-Width Modulator Methods and Apparatus”, and linearization and feedback is described in M. Nielsen and T. Larsen, “An RF Pulse Width Modulator for Switch-Mode Power Amplification of Varying Envelope Signals”, Aalborg University, Silicon Monolithic Integrated Circuits in RF Systems, 2007, pp. 277-280 (2007); and International Publication WO 2008/002225 A1 by H. Sjöland for “Switched Mode Power Amplification”. An example of a high-efficiency amplifier that includes band-pass (BP) PWM is described in F. Raab, “Radio Frequency Pulsewidth Modulation”, IEEE Trans. Comm. pp. 958-966 (August 1973). Instead of low-pass filtering the output signal to extract information at the same frequency as the input signal to an amplifier, Raab describes band-pass filtering in a transmitter to extract information around the PWM switching frequency.
Of course, it is desirable to avoid such complications and still have RF power amplifiers, transmitters, and other devices that meet the linearity and power-efficiency requirements of modern communication systems, such as recent- and future-generation cellular radio communication systems.
In an aspect of this invention, there is provided a device for generating quadrature pulse-width modulation (QPWM) signals that includes a circuit configured to generate, based on an in-phase (I) component and a quadrature phase (Q) component of an input signal, at least two respective pulse-width modulated (PWM) signals that are trains of pulses; and a reshaper configured to transform the at least two PWM signals into a QPWM signal that is a succession of pulses in which alternating pulses have widths that correspond to one or the other of the I and Q components.
In an aspect of this invention, there is provided a method of generating QPWM signals that includes the steps of converting I and Q components of an input signal into at least two PWM signals that are trains of pulses, and reshaping the at least two PWM signals into a QPWM signal that is a succession of pulses in which alternating pulses have widths that correspond to one or the other of the I and Q components.
The several features, objects, and advantages of this invention will be understood by reading this description in conjunction with the drawings, in which:
As described in more detail below, switched-mode amplifiers and devices having such amplifiers include PWM in a way that is based on Cartesian (as opposed to polar) coordinates. The inventor has recognized that two sets of pulses that represent respective in-phase and quadrature components of a conventional cartesian-coordinates input signal can be combined such that the combined set of pulses can be provided to a switched-mode amplifier without nonlinear cartesian-to-polar transformation and its associated wider internal bandwidth and other problems. In this application, the combined pulse trains are called a quadrature pulse-width modulation (QPWM) signal, and as will be clear from the context, such a signal is produced by a device called a quadrature pulse-width modulator (QPWM).
With BP PWM, the inputs 110, 112 to the stages A, B are driven by pulse trains such as those depicted in
The inventor has recognized that a switched-mode amplifier such as that depicted in
Although
Moreover, the signals depicted in
Thus, Cartesian coordinates can be used with band-pass (BP) PWM by overlaying pulse trains based respectively on the I- and Q-components of an input signal. The overlaid pulse trains are offset from each other by a fourth of the pulse repetition period (i.e., by ninety degrees). Since the I and Q information typically can be bipolar, i.e., it can have positive or negative values, a QPWM modulator is preferably able to handle negative signals, but a 180-degree shift in phase can be used instead as described below. It is currently believed that using a 180-degree phase shift instead of bipolar signals may affect benefits provided by QPWM because such a phase shift can be viewed as a local transformation of the I and Q components to polar coordinates. Although the phase shift could be performed quickly, it could be difficult to handle resulting discontinuities in the amplitudes of the I and Q components if the conversion is performed outside the modulator. Such effects on the benefits of QPWM might be avoided by generating the phase shift in the modulator rather than in the baseband input signal.
The PWMs 402, 404 can be realized in any of a number of different ways as known in the art. For example, a PWM can include an integrator and a comparator configured such that the integrator generates a (phase-modulated) triangular wave at a desired frequency based on an input square wave, and the comparator compares the triangular wave to the PWM input signal, e.g., a baseband I or Q component; the signal generated by the comparator is the PWM output signal that is based on the PWM input signal, which represents I- or Q-component amplitude.
For another example, a PWM 402, 404 can include two controllable time-delay elements and a logical AND gate. The time-delay elements are configured such that their time delays have opposite characteristics, i.e., one time delay increases by the same amount that the other time delay decreases for a change in a control signal, i.e., the PWM input signal that represents I- or Q-component amplitude. The two time-delayed signals generated by the time-delay elements are provided as inputs to the logical AND gate, and the output of the logical AND gate is the PWM output signal. The phase information is represented by the amplitudes of the I and Q components. Such an arrangement currently seems preferable to an integrator-comparator arrangement because of its lesser demands on gain and slew rate at the operating frequency, although sufficient time-delay linearity is needed to avoid unwanted modulation (amplitude/amplitude and amplitude/phase).
The PWM pulse-train signals IA, IB and QA, QB generated by the PWMs 402, 404 are transformed to QPWM signals by the reshaper 406, which can be realized by a suitably configured arrangement of logic gates such as that depicted in
A
B
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The gates 502, 504 can be implemented conveniently as suitably connected collections of conventional digital logic gates or suitably programmed gate arrays and processors.
A
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The gates 502′-508′ can be implemented conveniently as suitably connected collections of conventional digital logic gates or suitably programmed gate arrays and processors. It will be noted that the gates 502, 504 and the gates 502′-508′ have different truth tables, although the difference is merely an inverted output. The gates 502′, 504′ can be used in the reshaper 406 by including a simple inverter at each gate output.
The artisan will understand that the pairs of I and Q signals input to the gates 502′-508′ are pulse-width modulated I and Q components of the signals output by the PWMs 402, 404, and that the A and B signals output by the gates 510′, 512′ are the positive and negative parts of a differential QPWM signal. Of course, the input I- and Q-components can be independent of each other.
An advantage of the QPWM 400 depicted in
The duty cycle and envelope in the signal produced by the PWM device 602 have a non-linear (i.e., sinusoidal) relationship inherent to BP PWM, although for a small input amplitude signal, a sinusoid is approximately linear. Low-pass feedback as depicted in
The QPWM 400 described above employs bipolar signals (e.g., it can generate a bipolar differential output A-B). For applications that require a single-ended output (e.g., when only a single power supply voltage is used or otherwise when only a single-polarity output can be handled), it is possible to handle pulse polarity changes by transforming them into 180-degree phase shifts. This is depicted in
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The gate 906 can be implemented by a suitably configured arrangement of otherwise conventional logic gates or gate array or by a suitably programmed electronic processor.
The operation of the modulator 900 and gate 906 is depicted by the timing diagrams shown in
Rather than a modulator 900, another way to handle bipolar signals is to supply pulses at both 0 degrees and 180 degrees simultaneously to a suitable arrangement of logic gates or a suitably programmed processor. For example, the modulator 900 can be adapted by supplying the two time-delay elements 902, 904 with respective rectangular waves having different duty cycles, the rectangular wave supplied to the delay element 902 having wider pulses than that supplied to the delay element 904.
Such an adapted modulator 900′ is depicted in
The artisan may note a similarity of the modes of operation of the modulators 900, 900′ to amplifier modes of operation. The modulator 900 is reminiscent of a Class B amplifier in that positive and negative pulses do not overlap, and the modulator 900′ is reminiscent of a Class AB amplifier in that the crossover is evened out by permitting an overlap.
Two modulators 900 or 900′ can be used to generate the pulses for the I and Q components, respectively, in a QPWM.
The two sets of pulses produced by the modulators 900-1, 900-2 from input I- and Q-component signals, respectively, are combined by the OR gate 1206, or another suitable device, to form a QPWM signal that corresponds to a combination of the I and Q components. Thus, it can be seen that the gate 1206 is a reshaper, like the reshapers 406, 406′. In the arrangement 1200 depicted in
It will be appreciated that a modulator 900 or 900′ does not generate a differential output signal by itself, and so a pair of modulators 900 or 900′, a respective one for each of positive and negative output signals, can be used to generate a differential signal and act as the PWM 402 or the PWM 404 described above.
As depicted in
The PWM pulse-train signals IA, IB and QA, QB generated by the PWMs 402, 404 are transformed to QPWM signals A, B by the reshaper 406, which can be realized by a suitably configured arrangement of logic gates such as those depicted in
Global feedback in the transmitter 1300′ is provided by a demodulator 1342, which receives a portion of the combined signal generated by the balun 1338 and demodulates that portion into demodulated I- and Q-component signals that are respectively combined with the input I and Q components by differential amplifiers 1344, 1346. For the transmitter 1300′ to have wide bandwidth and avoid instability, it is currently believed that the phase reference provided to the demodulator 1342 should be compensated sufficiently for the propagation delay through the transmitter (and demodulator). The input I and Q components may also be predistorted if desired, just as in almost any transmitter, but in general such predistortion would be different from the arcsine described above.
It is currently believed that use of an envelope detector to avoid predistortion would not be useful in the transmitter 1300′. Placing such a detector after the balun 1338 would result in detection of the envelope of the combined signal, and would thus be part of a polar representation. Such a detector could not be placed before the balun 1338 because in the transmitter 1300′, each of the QPWM signals A, B is based on both I and Q components.
A method of quadrature pulse-width modulation such as that depicted by the flow chart in
As described above in connection with
It will be understood that the method depicted in
By avoiding a conversion from Cartesian to polar coordinates, the internal bandwidths of devices employing switched-mode amplifiers with QPWM do not have to exceed the internal bandwidths of such devices employing linear amplifiers. For digital (pulse) input signals, this greatly reduces the bandwidth requirements on the D/A converters (and other components) used in the devices, potentially lowering overall complexity as well as power consumption.
With QPWM using Cartesian coordinates in a modulator, phase information does not have to be introduced separately because it is already contained in the Cartesian form of signal. Thus, there is no time difference between phase and amplitude information. With QPWM described in this application, all information is contained in the amplitude domain; a quadrature signal is after all two amplitude-modulated signals that have phase positions such that they are orthogonal.
It will be appreciated that procedures described above are carried out repetitively as necessary, for example, to respond to the time-varying nature of communication channels between transmitters and receivers. In addition, in terms of the downlink and a UE, it will be understood that the methods and apparatus described here can be implemented in a BS or other uplink receiving node.
To facilitate understanding, many aspects of this invention are described in terms of sequences of actions that can be performed by, for example, elements of a programmable computer system. It will be recognized that various actions could be performed by specialized circuits (e.g., discrete logic gates interconnected to perform a specialized function or application-specific integrated circuits), by program instructions executed by one or more processors, or by a combination of both. Wireless receivers implementing embodiments of this invention can be included in, for example, mobile telephones, pagers, headsets, laptop computers and other mobile terminals, base stations, and the like.
Moreover, this invention can additionally be considered to be embodied entirely within any form of computer-readable storage medium having stored therein an appropriate set of instructions for use by or in connection with an instruction-execution system, apparatus, or device, such as a computer-based system, processor-containing system, or other system that can fetch instructions from a medium and execute the instructions. As used here, a “computer-readable medium” can be any means that can contain, store, communicate, propagate, or transport the program for use by or in connection with the instruction-execution system, apparatus, or device. The computer-readable medium can be, for example but not limited to, an electronic, magnetic, optical, electromagnetic, infrared, or semiconductor system, apparatus, device, or propagation medium. More specific examples (a non-exhaustive list) of the computer-readable medium include an electrical connection having one or more wires, a portable computer diskette, a random-access memory (RAM), a read-only memory (ROM), an erasable programmable read-only memory (EPROM or Flash memory), and an optical fiber.
Thus, the invention may be embodied in many different forms, not all of which are described above, and all such forms are contemplated to be within the scope of the invention. For each of the various aspects of the invention, any such form may be referred to as “logic configured to” perform a described action, or alternatively as “logic that” performs a described action.
It is emphasized that the terms “comprises” and “comprising”, when used in this application, specify the presence of stated features, integers, steps, or components and do not preclude the presence or addition of one or more other features, integers, steps, components, or groups thereof.
The particular embodiments described above are merely illustrative and should not be considered restrictive in any way. The scope of the invention is determined by the following claims, and all variations and equivalents that fall within the range of the claims are intended to be embraced therein.
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